"giveitawhirl2008" wrote in message
...

No, I'm not mixing up personal liberty with spending taxpayer money.
It is a symbolic statement about human, in person exploration, vs.
machines-only.


Ya know the thing about the Mars rovers, is that we got to see the
pictures the same time everyone else did. That was so exciting.
It felt as if I was going along. And the difference between manned
and robotic missions to me is that the amazement of manned
missions in the accomplishment of getting there. While robotic
missions the excitement is what they'll find. I guess it depends
if your into the engineering or the science. I want to know if
there's life on Mars, and I want to know yesterday. So for me
robots are the way to go.

I know the public has a choice in a free society; that's why this
would have to have the support of significantly more than fifty
percent of the citizens in participating countries. So the idea is to
sell it to the public. Admittedly, the public may never "buy" it. But
it's worth a shot.


But what I see is that they're trying to take a goal, manned missions
to the moon and mars, which have limited public support, and trying
to force people to like it with contrived or weak reasoning.

Why not start from a clean slate and design a goal with the express
purpose of being as popular as possible? So the question of
NASA's goal becomes..." find the goal that has the maximum
tangible benefits to the most people possible...which also intersects
with NASA's capabilities.

When I go down that route, it keeps settling on one kind of goal.
Space Solar Power.

Which has the potential to do the following....

End the planet's reliance on fossil fuels.
Turn America's into the next energy "Saudi Arabia"
Replace American's greatest single weakness into
it's greatest strength.
Provide govt paid bulk cargo needed to jump start
commercial launch industry.
Force us to build low cost to orbit vehicles.
Provide energy to the third world where it's not
possible today.
Change our energy future from steadily increasing costs
decreasing supply, and more and more coal. Into a future
trend where energy get cheaper, more plentiful and cleaner
over time. And just as an aside....
SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING!

Cheap, clean and abundant energy benefits EVERYONE
on the planet. And in many direct ways.

And I haven't even mentioned how it would provide power
for larger satellites and even colonies someday. Not to
mention the military has callled Space Solar Power a
potential 'game-changer' when it comes to military
capabilities and supply lines.

Now, please list how a moon shelter for six or so, used
only once in a while, compares to that?


Why did we go to the Moon? From the government's POV, it was
essentially a military expenditure as part of the Propaganda/Prestige/
Psychology Front in the Cold War. Beating the Russians was the main
idea.


Right, but what few seem to appreciate is this time it's about beating
the Chinese. The Chinese military budget, in real dollars, is approaching
our own level of spending. It would be a crying shame if the next forty
years was just a wasteful repeat of the last forty.


But rather: WOW! HUMAN BEINGS ARE WALKING ON ANOTHER WORLD!!!


Right, in the words of Tom Hanks, one of NASA's most avid fans.

"And it is meant to make people think, 'How in the world did we do that?
And isn't it a marvelous thing that we did,'" says Hanks.

"And maybe we should do it again?" Axelrod asks.

"Well," Hanks says, "the question would be why?"

"Once humankind has been some place and found it entrancing, they always
go back," says Hanks, the film's producer. "I think in the history of the human
race, the moon has been the first place we've gone to and said, 'OK, we
don't need to go back there again.'"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in881421.shtml



For many, if they are very glad that someone landed on the Moon and
would look forward to things like that happening again, the prospect
of ever further exploration would be at least as thrilling. And there
are those side benefits! Technological advance, etc.

I realize this may never sell to a large enough part of the public.
But it's worth a shot.


But if we really want an active space future, we need to build the kind
of lasting infrastructure that makes it possible. Another Apollo isn't
the answer. Space Solar Power would give us low cost to orbit
plentiful energy sources and most importantly, a strong economy
that makes such grand visions possible.

Ya know, if Bush didn't cancel the program below, we'd already
have a gigawatt class solar power satellite in orbit right now.

Executive Summary
NASA'S SPACE SOLAR POWER EXPLORATORY
RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY (SERT) PROGRAM
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10202&page=1
s


---------

jobs, etc.]


http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...thread/thread/...


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.t...hread/thread/4...


http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...thread/thread/...